social movements

Introduction

In this paper, I attempt to rehabilitate cybernetics, in some form, as a tradition that has the potential to enrich our understandings of radical or alternative forms of organisation. In doing so, I argue for an anarchist cybernetics: a reading of Stafford Beer’s organisational cybernetics that lends itself to forms of organisation that aim to limit if not completely reject centralised, top-down command and control in favour of participatory and democratic practices.

Pirate politics between protest movement and the parliament

The internet is the greatest thing that has happened to mankind since the printing press, and quite possibly a lot greater […] And we have only seen the beginning. But at this moment of fantastic opportunity, copyright is putting obstacles in the way of creativity, and copyright enforcement threatens fundamental rights… (Engström and Falkvinge, 2012: 7)

Protest camps is an inside look at various protest camps all over the world, from Resurrection City in Washington, DC to Greenham Common in the United Kingdom and to Horizon in Stirling, Scotland; from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt to OccupyLSX in London. The book provides a detailed account on how protest camps work to achieve their goals. More specifically, it provides both inside and outside accounts of protest camps. The book thereby takes into account several theoretical approaches, such as a sociological, a political science, and a communications approach.

The hegemonic grip of neoliberal ideas, and in particular the capitalist market economy, has been increasingly subject to critique from organization studies scholars. For Parker et al. (2014), this is because capitalism is not only a means to order the production of goods and services, but creates ‘obedient’ producers and consumers who uncritically accept the myth that there is no alternative (see also Shiva, 2014). Despite the growing interest in these concerns (for example, see the ephemera call for a special issue on ‘Organizing for the post-growth economy’) it could be argued that organization studies has, to some extent, colluded in the perpetuation of this myth. As Valerie Fournier has pointed out: ‘if one looks at the field of organization studies specifically, one may be forgiven for thinking that there aren’t many alternatives to capitalist corporations’ (2002: 189). Today much... more

Labels are often flashy conduits for hasty assumptions and partial truths. At the time when I was writing Action and Existence: Anarchism for Business Administration in the late 1970s, the term anarchism served as a handy synonym for mess, chaos, and disorder. In this context the word cropped up in public debates about the Baader-Meinhof terrorism in Germany in the aftermath of Paris 68, for example. In putting my book together, I set out to explain what I had learned through my own reading and discussion about this often short-changed term.

I receive and I give – such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination. (Bakunin, 2012/1882: 33)